Open season

Real estate agents have standard advice for homeowners planning an open house: Hire a cleaning service. Drop the pets off with a neighbor. And lock up your valuables because you never know who may be stopping by.

Take the pair of women posing as wealthy home buyers who recently visited at least six open houses at luxury homes in Manhattan and Upper Saddle River, N.J., and, police say, made off with jewelry and trinkets worth more than $73,000.

The haul included handbags by Louis Vuitton, Hemes and Coach; earrings, bracelets and an alarm clock from Tiffany; a fur coat, jackets, diamonds and even a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

The theft and subsequent arrests of the two women were splashed all over the tabloids and got real estate agents talking about renewed vigilance against the rare, sticky-fingered visitor.

A few large apartment buildings even changed their policies on open houses, adding a requirement that visitors show photo identification in the lobby.

"This has created a lot of shock," said Pamela Liebman, president and chief executive of the Corcoran Group, one of New York's biggest real estate agencies.

But, she added, sellers shouldn't worry. "I've been in the business for 20 years, and there are very, very few instances where this happens."

Open houses are practically a sport in some real estate-obsessed locales, with some drawing hundreds of house hunters in a short window of time. That makes it tough for brokers to keep an eye on everyone.

Even with home sales slumping across the country, the industry still looks to open houses to lure a maximum number of potential buyers.

Carol Burnett, a vice president at Alain Pinel Realtors, which has 23 offices in the San Francisco area, said it's common for brokers in strong markets to send a second agent to high-traffic open houses just to help keep an eye on customers.

Agents also ask sellers to help keep theft opportunities to a minimum.

"I never want to see jewelry out on display," Rochelle Bass, an executive vice president at Bellmarc Realty, another top Manhattan brokerage, wrote in an e-mail.

Other tips: Stash prescription drugs, even if that means removing them from the medicine cabinet; lock up checkbooks and any sensitive mail; hide items such as cameras and watches in a suitcase under the bed.

"If somebody looks strange or they are just looking around in the wrong way, ask questions, tell them to sign the register and ask for an ID," she said. "Don't be afraid to ask someone to leave and don't allow the place to get overwhelmed."

Prosecutors said the women charged, Jessica Joyner, 39, and Jennifer Jones, 33, did their best to look like well-heeled buyers.

Both came dressed like socialites, arriving in a Jaguar. According to police, one would distract the broker, while the other looked for things to steal.

The pair, however, attracted attention. A doorman wrote down their license plate number as they left one open house.

And on Nov. 11, an agent showing a $1.9 million three-bedroom duplex on the Upper West Side grew suspicious and went looking for one of the women who had drifted out of sight.

"When he walked in, she was throwing jewelry into a bag," said Douglas Heddings, a senior vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The women fled before police arrived, but Heddings posted images from the building's security camera on his blog,http://www.truegotham.com , to alert other brokers and the public.

Joyner and Jones were arrested late in November on charges of grand larceny and possession of stolen property.

A lawyer for the women said Joyner suffers from "serious and ongoing chronic medical and psychiatric issues" and that Jones had a medical condition that caused severe pain.

After the case was reported on New York television stations, police in New Jersey recognized similarities to thefts at a pair of open houses in Upper Saddle River, an affluent area.

When the women were taken into custody, they were wearing some of the jewelry that had been taken from those homes, police said.